


Flowers of Antimony

by lmeden



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-22
Updated: 2012-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:55:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/lmeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“—and Sherlock Homes’ll be the one that put it there.” That would never happen. Knowing Sherlock as he already did, John would have bet everything on the fact that no one would ever find one of the bodies Sherlock left behind unless he wanted them to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowers of Antimony

**Author's Note:**

> For knowmydark. I have no idea where the idea for this came from, but I loved it so much that I wrote this part in a day. I plan to follow the series and write five more chapters based on the show, so there will be more of this AU soon. Feedback is much appreciated.

 

“—and Sherlock Homes’ll be the one that put it there.”

John almost laughed in her face right there, but years of self-discipline kicked in and saved him, and he found himself raising his eyebrows at her as she cocked her head to hear the Detective Inspector, exposing the long, smooth line of her throat to him all unawares, nodded briefly to him, and strode away. John’s gaze lingered on her curls, bouncing over her neck, hiding it, until she vanished into the building. 

He turned away, sighed, and walked down the deserted street. The lights of the police cars flashed off the buildings all around him. He was going to have to walk for _blocks_ before he found a cab. His leg throbbed, and he gritted his teeth.

||

He knew within five minutes. He’d just met Sherlock, and the man was leaning back through the door to Barts’ lab, eyes alight with a self contained mania, and John _knew_. 

“The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

And then he was gone, and the sensation curled in John’s belly. 

Sherlock was like him. John had never thought he’d actually find another one, someone with the same predilections. Sherlock was like John, but he wasn’t afraid as John was, he didn’t hide who he was beneath layers of blandness and quiet words. He flaunted himself, his skills, his… _otherness_ , and because he did so, they all let him get away with it. 

_221B Baker Street_. John rolled the address around in his mind and lifted his cane, striding out of the hospital and waving for a cab. He had some research to do. 

||

He pulled out his desk drawer and lifted the slim case out, placing it on top of the closed lid of his laptop. He flicked the small clasps open and spread his knives out. Each was polished, gleaming in the dull light in his flat. He lifted a small scalpel and ran his gaze over it; not a single speck of dust or stain marred it.

It had been years since he’d used these knives, really _used_ them for something other than medical work. But he still remembered her face, how she’d tumbled into his arms at the bar and he’d offered to walk her home; how later, her body had seemed to fall apart under the touch of his knives; and how he’d spread her out, sewn the fruits of her body across the city until truly, she became part of this place that he loved. 

John’s fingers trembled as he lay the blade down. He wanted to use them, see the blood well up. He would have to wait, though. There was the problem of Sherlock Holmes, the mystery of him. He would take this man apart and then, then he could indulge. 

Regretfully, he closed the case and placed it back into the drawer. He closed it. He opened his laptop and waited for it to load, leaning his head on his hand and considering. 

Holmes. Sherlock Holmes.

||

The flat was crowded and smelled odd in a way that John was immediately able to identify as chemicals – specifically, a few minor acids and some…was that paprika? He couldn’t be any more specific than that. All of this was Sherlock’s then, no doubt. Did he dissolve the bodies of the people he’d killed in acid?

John glanced back at his potential flatmate, shifting through the room, handling the knife on the mantle with telling dexterity, speaking quickly as if he was trying to convince John of something. Pity John wasn’t really listening. 

No, he decided, Sherlock did something infinitely more interesting with them. 

“I’m sure that once we move all of this stuff out of here,” John ventured, curious, just as Sherlock said,

“Which is why I’ve already moved in.” And they both fell silent. 

John raised his eyebrows at Sherlock, who glanced down. John looked past him to the mantle, at the bleached skull sitting there. 

“Why do you have a skull?” he asked.

Sherlock barely looked at it. “Something to talk to, you know, run my theories by—“

The housekeeper – what was her name, Hudson? – broke in at that moment, her voice cloying. John settled into the chair Sherlock had cleared a moment before and looked over at her. 

“So what do you think?” she prodded. “There’s a second bedroom, which I can always open up, if you need it.”

“Of course I’d need it,” John said, sounding surprised. “Why—“

He allows his voice to trail off. Intriguing. Hudson knew Sherlock (or thought she did) far better than John. He’d have to take her suggestion under consideration. 

And then the police arrived, John gained his first glimpse of the earnest Detective Inspector Lestrade, and he first heard Sherlock’s laughter. It was a wonderful thing, and John smiled softly in response. 

When Sherlock came back for him, John’s grin starched across his face, and he practically ran down the stairs, cane tucked under his arm, sliding easily into the cab. 

||

In the cab, Sherlock sat next to one window and John sat next to the other. The silence was thick, so John said, “I looked you up. Found your website,” because normally there was nothing more prone to increase the awkwardness of a silence than an unsolicited comment. 

But Sherlock didn’t _hmph_ , nod, sigh, or otherwise indicate boredom. Instead, his gaze drifted away from the window and fixed on John, and he asked, “What did you think?”

“Bit unbelievable,” he said. “I mean, you can tell what someone’s profession is by their color of their tie and what they had for dinner by their shoes?”

Sherlock stiffened just slightly. “I can read Afghanistan in your limp and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone. What is there to… _not_ believe?”

John settled for raising his eyebrows and Sherlock launched off onto a detailed analysis of his character, one physical attribute at a time. He had noticed the scratches on John’s cell, the tan lines on his wrists, and the way he stood at rest. Sherlock had noticed almost everything about him. It was thrilling, exciting, and terrifying all at once. 

But he hadn’t seen through John’s bluff. Sherlock Holmes, the keen ‘consulting’ detective hadn’t seen the ghosts that clung to John – not just of his patients, oh no, but of the four women who had been so beautiful, so entrancing, that he hadn’t been able to resist killing them and taking them apart and leaving them in skips throughout London. 

Sherlock couldn’t see his kills, and John was glad for it. But John could see Sherlock’s kills – he wondered how many there were, what had drawn Sherlock to them – and he knew that in one way, at least, he was a step ahead. 

||

But as Sherlock leaned over the lady in pink, John’s confidence faded. Sherlock wasn’t reliant on observation – he could extrapolate and synthesize based on the tiny clues he gained with his sharp eyes. If John wasn’t careful, Sherlock would discover his secret in a single day, and likely come up with enough evidence to prosecute. 

The only reason he hadn’t found John out already was that he hadn’t been interested enough. 

John played along, slowed his walk, projected dullness. And Sherlock left him behind, already caught up in the next mystery. 

||

“—and Sherlock Homes’ll be the one that put it there.”

John considered her as she walked away – a rough, hard kind of beauty, and she really wasn’t his type. He smiled at her words, though. 

That would never happen. Knowing Sherlock as he already did, he would have bet everything on the fact that no one would ever find one of the bodies Sherlock left behind unless he wanted them to. 

And he’d never want that. 

||

He caught a cab and gave the cabbie the address to his flat. He walked up the stairs, gait uneven and heavy, and cleaned out his things. He grabbed his gun, his laptop, and the few pieces of clothing he own, shoving it all into a bag and slinging it over his shoulder. 

It unbalanced him even more, but he didn’t mind. The walk to Baker Street wasn’t too far, and he wanted the night air. He wanted to watch the women. Not that one, nor that one, but yes, that one was lovely. Her hair was dyed black, but even in this light he could see the paler roots. Cropped short, it curled at the top of her head, barely shifting as she laughed as her friends’ jokes, the slight high-pitched shrillness to her tone and the sway of her hips the only signs of the alcohol she’d consumed.

Then the phones began ringing, and by the time he’d looked back, she was gone. 

He sighed, pick up the phone, and then got into the limousine. 

Anthea was an interesting woman, but she didn’t entice John. He felt, despite the general lack of a personality she projected, that she was a killer herself (metaphorically, of course, the chances of John meeting more than one serial killer in a day were virtually nonexistent). He fancied she liked to take men apart in her spare time, using only a glance and the promise of a smile to get them to fall at her feet. Yes, she liked power, but in a different form than John did. 

Sherlock’s ‘enemy’ was a different story altogether. He was deliberately casual and yet John could tell as soon as he stepped out of the car that his mind was honed sharp as a razor. Sharper, possibly, than Sherlock’s. 

It put John on his guard, so that he leaned more heavily on his cane and glowered more fiercely in the general direction of the umbrella, and as the man let him go, John thought he’d gotten away with it. And then he asked for John’s hand, and John realized that he’d forgotten his hands, forgotten to tremble and quake, and his left had been betraying him all along. 

He loved this – the thrill of near-death experiences, the threat of ignorance. Of course, it wasn’t the same as Afghanistan, where death surrounded him like the London mist, but still. He’d take what he could get. 

Then the enemy let him go, and John got back into the limo with his things and was taken to 221B. He read his text messages on the way. 

||

Later that night, John balanced on the edge of indecision, arms braced under the weight of his gun, reading to shoot, should it appear that Sherlock needed it. He hated guns – they were crude, ungainly weapons – but they were also infinitely useful in situations like this. 

Through two panes of glass and the air between buildings, John watched Sherlock raise his hand, something tiny held between his fingers, his gaze steady on the cabbie. John couldn’t tell what he was thinking from here. 

He’d thought Sherlock would have a handle on the situation – that if John found him he might see Sherlock’s method, find out how he killed. But, unfortunately, it seemed like Sherlock was about to go the same way as all the cabbie’s other victims, and poison himself. It was a bitter disappointment to John, who’d expected better. 

As Sherlock lifted that infinitesimally small object to his lips, which was probably the poison in capsule form, John made his decision, sighted along the gun to the cabbie leaning forward eagerly, and pulled the trigger. 

The shot knocked his hands back and he lowered the gun, flexing his shoulders and then stepping aside when he saw that the cabbie had hit the floor. 

He was almost out of the room when he glanced back and saw Sherlock turn away from the window and back to the cabbie. John watched as he snarled down at the man, foot braced on his shoulder, and the cabbie writhed beneath him. He smiled across the way at his flatmate. Well, that was certainly more interesting. 

As the cabbie stilled and Sherlock stepped back, sirens echoed down the street and John jolted. He had to leave, now. But he looked back once more, wanting to see what else Sherlock would do, what else he would reveal when he imagined himself alone, and so he saw Sherlock lift his hand to his mouth, tilt his head back, and swallow. 

John’s eyes flew wide and he rushed out of the room, down the hall and to the street. Sherlock had taken the poison. Was he trying to kill himself? Was that the feeling that John had gotten at first sight – self-abandonment so severe it verged on suicidal? 

Shaken, he loitered outside the building, waiting for the police to arrive and careless of his own safety. He waited a few moments after they’d parked and set up, until Lestrade strode into the building before he pressed up against the police line, waiting to be noticed. 

||

Sherlock didn’t die. He came out of the building very much alive, acerbic, and with the name “Moriarty” dancing on his lips. 

He seemed, in fact, more alive now than when he’d gone in. 

And when he looked over at John, and his face went still and considering, John realized that he _knew_.

||

He dreamt of Afghanistan, only Sherlock was there. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, just his own shirt and trousers. The shirt was dark in the back where sweat stained it, and his dark hair curled limply at the base of his neck. The golden sunlight bounced off the sand around him and John saw that it was only the two of them here, just John and Sherlock. 

John said, “How do you kill them?”

And Sherlock replied, “I talk to them.”

The dream faded into another, became stranger, and much later, John woke up. He stared at the wall for long moments before pushing himself up and stumbling towards the bathroom.


End file.
